Best British Short Stories 2016

 I can't really explain except to say that night is my enemy. It's dark and terrible. Night whispers death. Every creature shrinks from it because the dark wants us and we sense it will bite to kill. It will kill if it can. And somewhere this tiny voice I hear is reassuring me. It repeats that night is only a means to morning, and the morning will take away all my terrors and give me fresh hope, if I can get to Walsingham.''

One of the best instalments in the series.

Highlights include:

The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant(Leone Ross): A woman ‘‘haunts'' a restaurant in order to be close to her one true love. Extremely moving and haunting.

The Politics of Minor Resistance(Jessie Greengrass): Working in a job that practically requires you to become a robot, a woman narrates her daily routine in a voice that cries in despair.

Walsingham(Trevor Fevin): Such a mysterious, eerie story...A woman who has experienced abuse is making a pilgrimage to find peace. However, the omens she encounters foretell anything but. A masterpiece that hovers between Gothic terror and Folk horror.

Mrs. Świȩtokrzyskie's Castle(Colette Sensier): A middle-aged woman becomes obsessed with an online RPG game. She falls (in dubious ways) for a man she has never seen and her actions result in strange repercussions for her children. Just how far can loneliness impact the weak-minded?

A Leg to Stand On(Neil Campbell): An academic feud goes horribly awry...

''We came back as ghosts from the war, haunting the places we once called home, but they had changed utterly, or rather it was that trench foot, trench mouth, the dawn burst of star shells, had changed us. The things we'd seen meant that we could no longer step upon the same blithe pavements, could no longer hold the dry, decisive hands of older girls on summer evenings, could no longer look with the same eyes on the wainscoting and gambling, the ivy, the chimney-topped roofs of our homes. Now we live between London's boarding houses and cafes, her pubs and her parks, striding with collars up through the endless, pitiless rain.''

Wyndham Le Strange Buys the School(Alex Preston): Four veterans of WWI (who might or might not be ghosts...) return to their familiar grounds only to find that the world has changed beyond recognition. An ode to Checkhov and a lament to life.

Song of the River(John Saul): Two young women move in a place near the Thames and we witness their almost whimsical conversations about strange dreams and music.

1961(Greg Thorpe): A story of identity and stardom, using the icon that was Judy Garland, set in New York.

The Staring Man(David Gaffney): A woman who makes models is visited by a mysterious old man, prompting her to create the figure of a staring man. She can't know that she has found herself a part in a tragic story. A beautiful dance between the supernatural and the real horrors in our lives.

''From the window at the sink I see blackbirds tapping the soil, early-morning spring thrushes, sheep at the fence. I notice the state of the clouds across the valley. Sounds I've made fill the room - the suck of water as it drains from the sink, mugs on their hooks chiming against each other, the end of conversation.''

My Husband Wants to Talk to Me Again(Kate Hendry): The disintegration of a marriage depicted through an absolute lack of communication.

The Only Thing Is Certain Is(Thomas McMullan): A true masterpiece! A man faces the death of his child and the cruel task of a cremation gone wrong in a city that seems to have succumbed to a strange regime. Is it a hallucination or a coping mechanism?

''That was what Scottish Islands were, after all: heather and bracken, tumbledown crofts and Highland cows, solitary eagles, hovering over rugged grandeur. And water: streams to waterfalls, crashing waves - a lot of water.''

Distance(Janice Galloway): A mysterious woman, who is clearly facing psychological issues, is almost disappointed when she finds out that her illness is actually curable. A story with a protagonist whose motives are unclear and a highly troubling mother-child relationship.

It is December now. Frost patterns the windows, shimmers on the roofs, making icicles of the towers. The weeds that smashed through the cellar door, that vined their way in through windows and shutters have died, leaving their yellow-brown corpses underfoot. The bats control the towers; further down the moths rustle and birds shriek and creak and cackle. Foxes scarper through the corridors, their swift brushes sweeping trails in the dust. There is an owl in the dormitory sitting watch over me as I sleep. Through the broken windows of the library, snow has blown, and banks up against the armchairs, the mildweed ottoman.''